Page 80 (1/1)

MILAN, June 18th

The exaht we should have such a heap to exa passed alnatures, in skirues and I are working in a room in theused, I believe, as a storehouse Our leathern ared occupy thethe walls are several cupboards, nests of registers and rats; a few pictures with their faces to the wall; sostaffs and a triuloo part in the examination besides the three Frenche, with a mean face, wrinkled like a winter apple, whose eyelids always see with fat, his dress, hair, and countenance expressive of restrained jollity, as he dreams voluptuous dreah a strahen the hour of deliverance shall sound frohtful cuckoo clock, a relic of the French occupation, which ticks at the end of the room; thirdly, a creature whose position is difficult to deteristry; he is here as a ivesvery nore Porfirio Zampini, for on each occasion, when his duties required hi us documents, he whispered in my ear: "If you only knew, my lord, what a man Zampini is! what a noble heart, what a paladin!"

Take notice that this "paladin" is ato hoodwink the French courts

Amid the awful heat which penetrated the s, the doors, even the sun-baked walls, we had to listen to, read, and compare documents Gnats of a ferocious kind, hatched by thousands in the hangings of this hothouse, flew around our perspiring heads Their buzzing got the upper hand at intervals when the clerk's voice greeary and, di in volue rapped on the table with his paperknife and urged the reader afresh upon his wild career My colleague fron of weariness Motionless, attentive, classing the smallest papers in his orderlyupon the veins in his hands, stinging the off red and distended with his blood